


you're so quiet you're almost tomorrow

by euterpes



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Human Disaster Garcia Flynn, Predestination Paradox, Slow Burn, Time Travel, basically timeless except the laws of the space time continuum finally catch up to them, but which lucy, chasing lucy, grandfather paradox, post 2x10, soft times, time team - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 04:56:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16361243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euterpes/pseuds/euterpes
Summary: “you see, because we’ve changed the timeline so often, before, with lucy, and now after her death—”“erasure,” jiya pipes in.“yes, thank you, my love. after lucy’s erasure, it’s possible that lucy is aliveanddead, stuck in one timeline, or all of them, or none. lucy’s hovering in a quantum limbo, stuck as both existing, from our memories, and non-existing at once.”“schrodinger’s time-traveller, if you will,” jiya offers not unkindly.“or schrodinger’s lover, for flynn’s sake. if you subscribe to a belief of the universal wavefunction, though, the everett’s many worlds theory would say that every change we’ve made, splits the universe into two, creating alternate histories and timelines. in some, lucy is alive, in others not. they live in different branches of the universe. so—”“so you’re saying lucy’s alive, and we can save her?”for the first time in a long time, garcia breathes.(something so blood-close it feels more like a memory than a dream:"in another timeline, there's a girl who loves you so, so much.")in another universe, lucy breathes too.





	you're so quiet you're almost tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> so i thought to myself, how do i maximize angst with some cool quantum physics? 
> 
> title from ocean vuong's poem "into the breach"

_two linear months after saving rufus and sending emma into hiding, the time team is nearly finished wrapping up their assignments and briefing the nsa. lucy and garcia are—well whatever they are, they’re happy— wyatt visits jessica in her cell, rufus and jiya are expecting (but they haven’t told anyone but connor, lets see how long they can keep that up) and denise is planning to take a leave of absence to spend time with her family._

__

__

_when emma re-emerges, with a brand new time machine and a jailbroken benjamin cahill, the time team, chase the newly named cahill society to colonial massachusetts at the start of the revolutionary war. garcia fires the first shot on the battle green (because of course he flynns it up), and chaos ensues. lucy’s father is killed in the process. with paradoxes galore piling upon the time team, the existing timeline begins to collapse in on itself. and the only solution: to let lucy die._

 

**LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS. APRIL 19, 1775**

Lucy Preston is going to die before America becomes America.

Technically speaking, she is not going to exist anymore, which is somehow a thousand thousand times worse, but she’s dying. Cut her some slack.

She’s run the timeline over and over again in her mind. Rufus has given himself headaches trying to argue the self-consistency principle. Garcia and Wyatt have tried to kill their way through the situation. None of it changes what they know: if they don’t get out of this colonial hellhole soon, the universe as they know it will cease to exist. And if they do, Lucy will cease to exist.

The sun, old and brown, hangs in the sky above them. The smoke from the battle is still settling in the air, the landscape violent-bright and heavy. It's a fitting scene for the end of the world. 

The rest of the team is already in the Lifeboat, still coming to terms with what's going to happen. Lucy squints up to face Garcia. Small lines mar the space between his brows, creased with worry. He looks like he's about to say something. 

He’s bleeding, she realizes, and concern is the first emotion she feels since the whole universe breaking situation. His arm never did heal perfectly. What is the pain of an old gunshot wound to this?

Nonetheless his hands, calloused and familiar, find her face, and she can't help it when her lashes flutter shut. "I can't let you do this."

And now she feels it all: the pain, the grief for the future, an inverse nostalgia. But also the love, the love she finally let herself hold onto. The love she feels for the man in front of her, the type she never thought she would. She makes her voice as soft as she can. "Garcia Flynn." Their foreheads bow together, like a prayer to and for themselves. "I love you.” She doesn’t remember the last time she’s said that. “I love you. God, I love you, across all time and space, throughout centuries…”

(She sees him, finally watching scandal with Rufus. Finally taking down Rittenhouse once and for all, as a team. Getting closure about his wife and daughter. Shaking hands with Denise. Getting tacos with them all. Visiting Jiya when she gives birth. Her family, still whole.)

She crushes herself against Garcia, feels him shake. This man, how she loved and was loved by him. Her forehead in the slight of his neck. His pulse, beating wildly. (He’s alive, he will still be alive when they go back, it’s okay).

When he finally speaks it is broken. "I will never forget you, my Lucy."

She smiles, sad and sweet. 

(A warm day, but he's indoors. Walks into the kitchen for a beer. Takes pause when he recognizes the label distantly, feels a knocking under his ribs.)

"I'll never have existed."

(Not an empty seat at the table but something empty, hanging over them. Not even empty, but there they are, finally having defeated their enemy, having dinner together as a team, and something is not quite right). 

Flynn shudders, breathes out a shaky sob. She takes comfort in knowing that they will leave soon, that when they get back to present day they will have a mission at hand, a mission they will complete successfully, and the small, dark haired historian will have faded from their minds completely.

(A stack of books in the corner of the bunker. Everybody's almost all packed up but no one has claimed it, not even the Abraham Lincoln biography at the top). 

Wyatt finally interrupts them, sticking his head out the lifeboat door. He looks well and truly shattered, worse than he did when he found out about Jessica (whichever time). “We have to go now.”

She's said her goodbyes to her original team already, but when they make eye-contact (the first "ma'am," buckling her in even though she's perfectly capable of doing so herself, thank you very much, even their brief romance, why the hell not) her eyes well with tears again.

Sergeant Master Wyatt Logan smiles once more at her. Sweetheart," he says one last time, with a salute and a familiar drawl to it, before he enters the Lifeboat. 

Wordlessly, Lucy and Flynn do the same. If they stumble they catch each other. He helps her tattered skirts into the machine and tries to get her settled in.

"No, no. I'll disappear before you land, and it's much too dangerous for you without a seatbelt."

Flynn interjects, then Wyatt and Rufus, but she doesn't even hear them. The ending is so clear, so marked she is all at once filled with a forgiving calm. 

Rufus begins engaging the buttons, hands shaking. He is not disguising the wetness on his cheeks now.

Lucy reaches over, stills his hand in the air. Intertwines their fingers. "Hey, take care of Jiya, okay? tell her—" a broken sort of laugh— "I'm happy it'll work out for you too better than it did for her and me. From Lacey, to Cagney."

Rufus nods. There are no words, or not enough, to say what she is doing for all of them.

"Go save the world." She allows herself one last meaningful glance at Rufus before returning to her old seat.

(It’s Lucy that’s saving the world, Rufus thinks).

Wyatt looks away when she nears Garcia. She thanks him silently, and will keep thanking him for the rest of her short life, for this kind privacy.

She kneels before Garcia, helping him into the buckles. She would laugh at the irony if she could. There was a time, in a timeline that was now folding in on itself, when she had been in that seat, for the first time without Wyatt, hurt like Garcia was now and leaning away from his touch, surprisingly gentle as it was. And the very first time she was in the seat, still not completely convinced of this time travelling shenanigan. Worried about this Flynn fellow they were supposed to stop.

She feels his gaze, hot and meaningful, and looks up.

 

“I can't do this. i can't lose another— you can do it, Lucy, you're strong, but I won't survive this.”

She smiles. It burns like death. “That’s the best part, then. You can't lose me if I never existed in the first place.”

"Don't do this," He pleads, his accent, after all this time, still peaking through. "We can find a way, please, Lucy, we can—"

She reaches into her jacket and feels for the familiar soft bound leather. Folds the journal that started it all, at least for them, into his lap. How she knows it is in her pocket is a question she doesn't have time to consider.

"I don't know what will happen to this, I'm half sure it'll disappear, but it's yours."

(I’m yours).

Garcia swallows. “Once I asked God to lead me to answers. You said… he led me to you. Once I asked God for absolution. A few days later, we were working together. I didn’t deserve it, but there you were, Lucy. My absolution.”

She touches his face. She wants to say she doesn't want to do this, that she is not brave enough, not selfless enough. She wants a self that cannot be lessened. What is being brave to being happy, even if it is in this eighteenth century war-torn shithole? But he would too readily agree to stay here with her, and she knows that can't happen.

Still, she allows herself a bit of selfishness. The Lifeboat is beginning to hum, Lucy feels the shuddering when she reaches forward to press her lips onto his. He kisses her hard, plaintively, like he is already forgetting. Like he is trying to remember. 

Her hands clasps onto his, onto her journal, onto the first thing connecting them together.

(The last thing, connecting them together.)

"Dream of me," she whispers softly, her lips still not far from his. 

Everything is spinning now but Lucy still doesn't shut her eyes, staring right into his, until he too is a blur of color, until her grip in his hands is to keep her balance as the Lifeboat shakes, until the pressure is so hot it makes the pain inside her less unbearable.

And in the end it is not so bad, she thinks, not a bullet or any disease, not by an enemy but with the people she loves most in the world. Not so bad. The world disappears.

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my very first fanfic ever!! pls leave comments & kudos & find me on tumblr!! @chikfilbae


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